Voice Mailbox di Italia

When a new UI style is designed, it has to be assessed with real users who come from different cultural backgrounds. In this chapter I have suggested that it is possible to conduct usability evaluations with low-fidelity prototypes that support design for universal usability and allow culture-specific changes to be introduced during testing. This enables the fast design iterations that are necessary in intercultural modifications to our user interfaces. The simplicity of paper mock-ups prompts the test users to give feedback about important basic interaction decisions rather than design details.

By repeating the tests, we can gain the following advantages:

• The reliability of results increases.

• Iterative product design is supported in a natural way when changes are implemented immediately and evaluated in the next test an hour later.

• The test setup can be continuously improved by iteration. The first test is different from the last test even though the test plan is identical.

Figure 8.7 summarizes the phases of international paper prototype testing over the 11⁄2-month period that was the total length of the test round. Steps from prototype localization (day before testing) until test sessions ended (day 4) were carried out in parallel in four countries. Although the prototype itself can be prepared quickly with a paper prototype, time is needed for practical arrangements, communication, reviewing, and figuring out challenges posed by the temporary project organization that this kind of testing represents. Figure 8.8 shows the approximate number of workdays required from the shareholders. The figures exclude the actual design work that precedes testing.

The key activities, with approximate overall workloads, are

Test project coordination: 30%

Documentation (including pretest preparations and posttest analysis): 30%

Execution of usability tests: 40%

Figure 8.7: The process of preparing an international usability test round.

Figure 8.8: The amount of work (expressed as working days) needed to arrange and conduct an international test tour.

This round of Series 60 UI evaluation just described was limited to Europe. We did other tours including the east and west coasts of the United States, Japan, and China. International test rounds are carried out for validation of major new interface solutions, like Series 60. Usability world tours address both the common core of usability and local differences. The reasons behind cultural variations are perhaps better revealed by more contextual approaches, as discussed in Part 2 of this book. Paper prototype testing, however, tightly links cultural differences in a concrete way with the UI solutions we're evaluating. One can say that Nokia as an organization has learned to excise designer-centered thinking, whereby something that is appropriate and understandable for me and the people I know is good for everyone else as well.

The Series 60 voice mailbox is presented here as an example of local differences in using mobile services. The rationale for our product design came from the Finnish way of using voice mailbox in a mobile handset, and from a designer-originated way of looking at the feature. In many handsets the voice mailbox is accessed with a shortcut in key 1, and in our operating environment one's 10-digit voice mailbox number is based on the user's personal mobile phone number. Manually dialing voice mailbox would require the user to insert all 10 digits before pressing the send key. No one does that; there is plenty of motivation to find a shortcut.

We assumed that the key 1 shortcut is generally used. In Italy, though, voice mailbox is accessed by dialing 919 instead of a shortcut key. In our tests most users decided to dial the number manually because they couldn't find a corresponding function directly indicated in the UI, and because they were accustomed to performing this operation that way. Therefore, if we want to improve voice mailbox access in the Italian context, cutting down the number of key presses is not enough. Something else needs to be done, for example, replacing the shortcut with a clearly labeled menu item.

We could have asked Italian operators how they provide their voice mailbox services, but by asking users instead of mobile operators, we learned not only what is provided but also what is used and how it is used.